


the lost myth of true love

by extasiswings



Series: happens grace [1]
Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Falling In Love, Feelings, First Meetings, First Time, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-25
Updated: 2019-09-24
Packaged: 2020-09-26 18:30:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20394226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings
Summary: For the prompt: "Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground."It was a good day. Except that her son is dead. So what isgoodanyway?Maria forces her eyes away from Gabriel's picture as she sets her things down and goes to the kitchen to make dinner. She has a drink after and goes to bed early and doesn’t think about dark eyes and accented voices calling her beautiful.She doubts she’ll see Asher Flynn again anyway. Men like that never seem to stay anywhere for long.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [qqueenofhades](https://archiveofourown.org/users/qqueenofhades/gifts), [letmetellyouaboutmyfeels](https://archiveofourown.org/users/letmetellyouaboutmyfeels/gifts).

Maria Tompkins meets Asher Flynn on a Wednesday. Well, technically. She doesn’t know his name is Asher Flynn at the time—he doesn’t bother to actually introduce himself—she only knows that when she gets back from lunch there is a strange and very tall man behind her desk looking at the engine designs she’s been sketching in her spare time. 

He looks up only briefly when she rather pointedly clears her throat, merely giving her a cursory glance before looking back down at the sketches. 

“Can I help you with something?” Maria asks, crossing her arms over her chest. Her voice is sharper than it might have been a year before, but she had thin patience for men’s nonsense then and has even less now. 

“You can help me understand why an engineer is sitting with the secretarial staff,” he replies, giving the sheets a last long look before turning his full attention on her. “These are quite brilliant.”

His voice is different than she expected, roughened by an accent that is not quite Russian but not as far west as German either, and his features are striking, all dark eyes and a jaw sharp enough to cut glass. If she were the type of woman who typically cared about such things, or if she were in any mood to, she might have been more affected, but in the moment she merely bristles. 

(It’s rather a sore spot, that. Not because she thinks she’s better than anyone else or that there’s anything wrong with her job—it’s perfectly respectable and she does a fine job despite being bored out of her skull—but she also knows she can design circles around half the engineering staff. And...well. It’s only gotten harder to content herself with what she has now that she’s lost the reason she was able to live with it.)

“I sit with the secretaries because I _am_ a secretary,” Maria bites back. “Is your contention that there’s something wrong with that or are you merely shocked that someone who is _just_ a secretary could also be brilliant?”

“On the contrary, I have nothing but the deepest respect for secretaries, the great majority of whom I find to be exceedingly bright,” the man says. “But I haven’t met many who also spend their time designing jet engines. Especially not ones as beautiful as you.” 

Maria doesn’t bother even rolling her eyes, instead giving him a blank, unimpressed look. 

“Well, now you have. And I’d like my desk back if it’s all the same to you. Some of us have work to do.”

“Have dinner with me,” he counters.

“Absolutely not.” 

Maria steps around him to pull out her chair and sets her hand flat against the designs in case he had any grand ideas of taking them. 

“A drink. Just one.”

“No.” Maria opens the file she’d been working on before lunch and returns to where she’d left off, pointedly ignoring the man still standing by her desk. 

“Please?”

She doesn’t bother looking up. “I’m not in the habit of going out with strange men who bother me at work,” she replies. 

He laughs and holds up his hands in surrender. 

“Very well, very well, I take your point.” He glances at the clock. “I should be going anyway. But, hold onto those plans, Ms. Tompkins. They really are impressive.”

Maria’s head snaps up, but he’s already turned away. When her eyes flick to the nameplate on her desk, she swears internally. Of course. And she still has no idea who he is. 

She sighs and goes back to her work, putting the encounter out of her mind as she loses herself in the dull monotony of filing and paperwork. Later in the afternoon, after a break away from her desk, she notices that her designs are gone. 

“Maria?” The query interrupts her internal panic. Mr. Dunn, the chief engineer, is standing over her desk, with a curious look on his face. “Would you come with me, please?”

“I—” Maria, stops and clears her throat. “Of course, sir. Is something the matter?”

He waves off the question. “No, no, nothing like that, it’s only—well, let’s discuss it in my office.”

When they get there, she sees her designs on his desk. Within the hour, she has a new job. 

She’s dazed when she finally leaves for the day, her mind spinning, incredulous, unsure if she should laugh or pinch herself. She is entirely unconvinced she isn’t dreaming. 

A dark shadow pushes off a wall nearby and starts down the street—Maria stops and calls out.

“Hey! Wait!” 

The man from earlier politely pauses and waits for her to catch up. 

“Evening, Ms. Tompkins, “ he greets. That’s all he says, but there’s a glint of satisfaction in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth, and she just knows. 

“What did you do?” 

“Me?” He shrugs. “I don’t recall doing anything particularly notable today. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“You gave my designs to Mr. Dunn and told him they were mine,” she clarifies. “Why would you do that?”

His lips twitch. “Have dinner with me,” he offers instead of an answer.

Maria stares. “..did you get me a job because you thought it would get you a date?”

“I _facilitated_ you getting _yourself_ the job you should be doing because I was negotiating a contract and the people I work for have a vested interest in having the most talented people possible working on their projects. That was business,” he corrects. “Asking you out, well, that’s an entirely separate matter.”

“Who _are_ you?”

“Asher Flynn.”

The name doesn’t seem to fit at all, the Irish surname decidedly out of sync with the Eastern European accent and dark, striking features. But Maria bites back the curiosity on the tip of her tongue before she can ask. 

“And who do you work for?” She asks instead.

His smile is a sliver holding a thousand secrets. 

“The government.”

“Which government?”

The smile widens and Asher steps back. 

“Have a good night, Ms. Tompkins,” he says. “Maybe we’ll see each other again.”

He turns the corner before she can call him back, and when she catches up there’s no sign of him on the street. 

Well then. 

Maria walks the rest of the way home in quiet contemplation, her arms hugged around herself. 

It was a good day, she thinks as she unlocks the door to her apartment. It was a good day. 

Her eyes go immediately to the picture on the mantle when she walks in, and then she has to swallow hard against the lump in her throat, breathe through the pain in her chest that doesn’t seem to ever go away entirely.

Because her son is dead. 

“Your mama’s an engineer, Gabriel,” she tells the picture. It doesn’t answer back, of course. It never does. 

(It was a good day. Except that her son is dead. So what is _good_ anyway?)

Maria forces her eyes away as she sets her things down and goes to the kitchen to make dinner. She has a drink after and goes to bed early and doesn’t think about dark eyes and accented voices calling her beautiful. 

She doubts she’ll see Asher Flynn again anyway. Men like that never seem to stay anywhere for long.

* * *

“Ms. Tompkins.”

“Mr. Flynn.”

(He doesn’t leave.)

It becomes a habit, Asher falling into step with her when she leaves Lockman at the end of each day, no mean feat when one of his usual strides is at least two of hers. She doesn’t know what he does during the rest of his days—something shadowy and secretive no doubt—but he always manages to be there when she leaves. 

“May I see you home?”

“You certainly may not.”

That, too, becomes habit. He asks, she answers, and he walks her only as far as the end of the next block before turning the other direction. Maria is never sure if he actually lives in that direction or if it’s simply an excuse to walk at least part of the way with her. 

And they talk. Oh, he flirts shamelessly, but not with any great amount of intention, and it’s easy enough to ignore. But between that, he asks about her day and doesn’t press her to say anything much at all, filling the silences by offering up random information about himself. Once, he tells a story about a boyhood misadventure that has her in stitches and lingering at their crossroad for minutes longer than usual as he grins at her in the slowly dying daylight. 

It’s comfortable. And it’s strange that it’s comfortable, strange that it’s a habit at all when she could have sworn after that first day that he was entirely too insufferable to put up with. But it is nonetheless.

Maria knows he doesn’t know. That may be part of it. At Lockman and everywhere else in her life, everyone around her knows, and they whisper and they _look_ at her. 

_Oh, Maria Tompkins, that poor young widow, and did you hear she lost her son as well? How awful…_

She can’t stand it. 

But Asher doesn’t look at her like that, like he has to tread carefully or she might fall to pieces at any moment. He looks at her like she’s just a woman and when he calls her beautiful she believes he means it. 

(It doesn’t mean anything though. Not truly. Because she has lost a husband and a son and already has days where even getting out of bed feels like a near-impossible task. She goes home to an apartment that has not changed since the day Gabriel died in it, his bedroom, his clothes, his toys, untouched, unmoved, frozen in perfect time. How could she possibly open up to someone else when she hasn’t yet recovered from the last losses? No, she was not meant for love. There is too much sorrow in her.)

So. She knows he doesn’t know. And selfishly, she wishes it could stay that way. But of course, the world has rarely cared about what she wants.

“Who is Gabriel?” 

The question falls from his lips a month into their...whatever it is, and Maria feels like she’s missed a stair, her stomach dropping and turning over all at once. She thinks she may have forgotten how to speak, her throat working but no sound emerging, and she’s not convinced she hasn’t swallowed glass. 

“Forgive me,” Asher backtracks when the silence stretches on. “It’s none of my business. I asked because one of the secretaries stopped me before you arrived to ask if I was taking you home tonight because she didn’t think you should be alone on Gabriel’s birthday and—well. But it doesn’t—you don’t need to explain.”

“My son,” Maria forces out, not looking at him. “Gabriel was my son.”

She doesn’t explain further, allowing the past tense to speak for itself. The silence stretches on. 

“Your husband—?”

“He passed several years ago.”

“I’m sorry,” Asher says quietly. “It’s a terrible thing—a parent having to bury their child.”

“It’s an _impossible_ thing,” Maria replies. Not for the first time, she’s struck with the injustice of it all, reminded of all the nights she’s spent staring up at the ceiling screaming at God in her mind, and it hurts. For all that it’s been a year, it still hurts like it was yesterday to think her beautiful boy will never grow up, never be a teenager, never fall in love, never get married— 

“Maria.” Asher’s fingers close lightly around her wrist, his thumb stroking over her pulse. It strikes her that for all his overtures, he’s never touched her before. It strikes her that it’s been a long time since anyone has. 

“Let me walk you home,” he continues. “Even if it’s just this once. Please.”

God, she can’t bear to look at him. She can’t bear to see him looking at her.

Maria swallows hard.

“Not today, Mr. Flynn.” She falls painfully short of lightness, and they both know it. His fingers slip away from her wrist. She feels the loss immediately. 

“Perhaps another time, Ms. Tompkins.”

For the first time, he doesn’t walk with her all the way to the next block. And the next day, Celeste, one of the office ladies is waiting for her instead.

“Your young man wanted me to give you this,” she says, handing Maria a sealed envelope. “Seemed awful cut up about it, too. Kept muttering about bad timing.”

She doesn’t need to read it to know he’s gone. So she doesn’t read it at all.

* * *

Maria doesn’t expect to see Asher Flynn again. Quite frankly, she tries not to think about him much at all, tries not to think about walks home and quiet laughter and the foreign tension in her mouth whenever he managed to make her smile. She works instead, works later into the night, starts earlier in the morning, works until her eyes hurt and fingers ache and until she’s too exhausted at the end of every day to feel anything at all. 

It’s easier that way. 

(Gabriel’s room remains untouched, Asher’s letter remains unopened, her wedding ring remains locked away in her jewelry box. And nothing changes.)

“You want me to go where?” 

Two years since Gabriel, a year since Asher, and Maria stares at Mr. Dunn from the other side of his desk.

“Vienna,” her boss replies. “There’s a conference, we’ll be sending a few representatives—I think you should be one of them.”

“But...I’m not a senior engineer.”

“You work as hard as one. You’re as good as any of them. And…” He spreads his hands and shrugs. “...well, it seems like you could maybe use a change of pace.”

And because you don’t really argue with your supervisor when they want to send you halfway around the world, Maria goes to Vienna. 

She feels him before he speaks, the familiar presence slipping into place at her side making her breath catch. She hates that it does, at least a little. If he was going to run away, he could at least have the decency to stay gone. But, no.

“Ms. Tompkins.”

“Mr. Flynn.”

“I wondered if I would see you here.”

“I’m surprised to see you,” Maria replies. “More contracts to negotiate?”

“Something like that,” Asher acknowledges. “Will you have dinner with me?”

Maria looks over at him for the first time, noting the shadows under his eyes, the scruff that clings to his jaw, begging for a razor, the exhaustion hanging in every line of him. There’s nothing of flirtation in the question, merely a certain sadness and a resignation that she finds relatable. 

“You left,” she says, stalling for an answer. For once, no doesn’t leap automatically to her lips, even if that might have been the most appropriate response. 

“I had orders,” he replies. “I wrote—”

“I didn’t read it.” 

That brings a smile to his mouth, small and sad, but a smile nonetheless. 

“I suppose I can’t blame you for that.”

They look at each other, silence hanging in the air between them, loud with the number of unspoken things. Maria is vaguely aware of other people milling about in the background, but she doesn’t think of them. Not them, not her schedule, not the list of talks and events in her purse. 

“Yes,” she says finally. “I’ll have dinner with you.”

They are quiet as they walk, Asher leading her away from the hotel, down narrow streets and twisting back alleys until he finally stops in front of a small place just opening for dinner. Maria isn’t entirely sure what she expected—flair and expense rather than subtle intimacy perhaps—but she’s grateful for it. She has no desire to be surrounded by crowds of businessmen closing deals, scientists networking, lovers looking for distractions from one another. She’s already spent more time in public traveling than she has in ages, and there’s a tightness in her skin that begins to slowly relax when Asher pulls out a chair for her in the back corner of the restaurant. 

“How have—” Maria nearly bites her tongue at the banality of the question, but forces herself to finish it. “How have you been?”

“Busy,” he replies.”Things have been...well, I can’t really talk about it, but. Yes. Busy.”

She nods. “So have I,” she admits. “Trying to keep busy at any rate. Things seem...simpler that way.”

“I missed you.”

Her eyes meet his and her stomach flips over at the sincerity in his gaze. When she swallows under the scrutiny, her throat is tight. 

It’s uncomfortable, the tension inside of her. She doesn’t know if she wants him to mean it. It might make things easier if he didn’t. 

“You left,” she reminds him again. “And it felt like—did you leave because you think I’m...damaged?”

Asher looks genuinely aghast at the very suggestion. 

“As I said, I left because I was ordered to,” he says. “And because patience had finally run out with all my excuses for staying. Trust me, I recognize the unfortunate timing, and I am sorry, truly sorry, Maria, if I made you think—but god, no. Never. I could never think—I would never. Please believe that.”

“You wouldn’t have been the first to think so,” Maria acknowledges. They’re interrupted by a server, and she takes the moment to breathe, grateful for a brief respite from Asher’s focused attention. When they’re alone again, his eyes return to her—hers fix on a nick in the wood of the table.

“Well, I don’t. And whoever does is a fool. Maria…” Asher reaches across the table, stopping short of actually taking her hand, but briefly touching the back of it. “You have suffered unbearable losses and you survived. You’re still standing. That doesn’t make you damaged or broken or unlovable or whatever it is you think. It means you’re strong. And brave. Almost certainly the strongest person I know.” 

(She doesn’t feel strong. She doesn’t feel strong or brave or beautiful or any of the things she sees in his eyes when he looks at her. But it’s hard to argue with such conviction. And frankly, she doesn’t want to try.)

“I didn’t used to be like this,” she says instead. “I was...bright and fun and alive. And I don’t know how to be those things again. I don’t know if I can be.”

_I don’t know if I can love you the way you deserve to be loved_, she thinks, hoping he hears what she doesn’t say aloud. 

“You will never be exactly who you were before,” Asher replies. “But that doesn’t mean what you can be isn’t just as good. It doesn’t mean you can’t ever be happy again.”

“I don’t know how.”

“Let me show you.” His thumb sweeps over her knuckles and Maria exhales shakily. “Let me try. Please? Because I would gladly spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy.”

“Asher…” She wants to shy away from it. Or else shake him or shout. Why? Why bother? Why her? When he is kind and charming and attractive and could undoubtedly get a thousand other women without a mountain of baggage to fall in love with him. It doesn’t feel _right_ even as she simultaneously shocks with a frisson of possessiveness, of delight at being the one he wants. But...

“You don’t want me,” she says, and he shakes his head.

“Respectfully, you don’t get to decide that,” he replies. “If you don’t feel the same, if you really want me to let it be, I will. But if you just think I’m making a mistake because you don’t understand how I could, I would ask that you allow me the courtesy of knowing my own mind.” 

They’re interrupted again, and Maria swallows around the lump in her throat. 

“It doesn’t matter,” she points out when they’re alone again. 

“Why not?”

“Because you can’t—” She blows out a breath in frustration, feeling entirely thrown off balance. “Asher, you already had to leave once. It would never work. Don’t promise me anything, please.”

“Do you want it to work?” Asher asks. He holds up a hand when she opens her mouth immediately. “No, honestly. Do you? Because, Maria...yes, there are obstacles, of course there are. But if you want this the way I do...I would do anything to make it real.”

“You realize that sounds crazy.”

He shrugs. “Maybe. But...I’m in love with you. So it’s the truth.”

And there it is. Out in the open, unable to be taken back. Maria looks away, torn between recoiling from it and wanting it desperately. He shouldn’t, he shouldn’t, he _shouldn’t_ love her. Not when she’s so adrift, not when she doesn’t know what to do with it. Is it fair to accept it? It’s not as if he doesn’t know her circumstances, but still. 

(For a moment, she allows herself to imagine it—being with him, waking up with him, being held, being loved. She imagines sheets on a clothesline and a child with his hair and her eyes, a life that moves and breathes and laughs in vivid color instead of being frozen and cold and grey. And for that instant, she wants it so fiercely she aches with it down to her very bones. At least, until the guilt crashes back over her, because that is not a life she deserves. She shouldn’t get to move on, to replace the things she’s lost. _But what if…_) 

“Asher…”

“You don’t have to say it back,” he assures. “You don’t have to say anything at all. I just thought you should know.”

He changes the subject then, asking about her travels, her work, her plans for the conference, and she’s grateful. There is no danger in those lines of inquiry, nothing to set her spinning out into uncertainty and emotional upheaval. It strikes her that he knows her well enough for that—to understand when to push and when to pull back without her needing to say a word. 

When did that happen? How did he learn her without her knowing? 

Why does she think she might love him for it?

“Can I see you again?” The question, when it comes at the end of the evening after Asher has walked her back to the hotel, is low and almost shy when compared to his earlier forwardness. 

Maria’s first thought is that she should say no. After all, she said it at dinner—what would be the point? At the end of the week, she’ll return to Texas and he’ll go back to Yugoslavia or parts unknown for some other assignment and they won’t see each other again for god knows how long if ever. And she shouldn’t encourage him. 

She shouldn’t.

She does.

“Tomorrow night,” she agrees. “At seven?”

“I’ll see you then.” For a moment, Asher looks like he might say something else, his eyes flicking down to her lips so briefly she might have missed it if she hadn’t been watching him carefully. But then, he clears his throat and takes a step back. 

“Good night, Maria.”

“Good night.” As she watches him go, she tries to ignore the way her breath catches when she imagines what might have happened if he’d been less of a gentleman. 

She shouldn’t encourage him. But, oh, she wants to. 

The rest of the week passes similarly—Maria fills her days with conference sessions and spends her evenings with Asher. He doesn’t repeat the sentiments he expressed the first night, but she sees them in his eyes whenever he looks at her, a staggering devotion that makes it difficult to hold his gaze for long. And the nights get longer, the two of them lingering later and later at dinner tables over glasses of wine and dessert and coffee—anything to extend the time. With each passing moment, it’s as if the ice in her veins cracks further, the first whispers of spring after a long winter, and the vice guilt wrapped around her heart loosens centimeter by centimeter. 

The trouble is, she doesn’t want to leave. But she can’t stay either. And neither can Asher. The bubble they’ve wrapped themselves in has an expiration date and both of them know it. So she shouldn’t get attached. She shouldn’t let herself get used to him. She shouldn’t let herself pretend. 

She does anyway. 

On the last night, she takes his hand as he walks her back to the hotel. Asher cuts his eyes over to her, the two of them close enough that she notices the way his breath stutters. But he doesn’t hesitate beyond that, lacing his fingers through hers and squeezing gently. Warmth spreads out from the touch, through her fingers, up her wrist, and Maria closes her eyes briefly as she lets it fill her—she’s spent so long being numb. 

It’s late by the time they reach the doors, well past midnight, the streets are hushed and calm with the strange power of the early hours. They’ve been walking for an age, hand in hand, and Maria looks down at their laced fingers and thinks she would sooner cut off the limb than let go. 

“I should…” Asher’s voice is soft, but in the silence may as well be an organ blast. “I should let you sleep.”

Maria looks back to his face, to those eyes with all their devotion, and can’t think of anything she would like less. 

“Walk me to my room?” She says before she can convince herself otherwise. 

She doesn’t let go of his hand. 

Asher swallows hard when they reach her door, his gaze darting from their hands to the door to her own eyes. 

“Maria…?”

It’s both question and plea, and Maria can feel the restrained need in every line of him.

_What do you want? I love you. Tell me. Please?_

_I would gladly spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy._

“Come inside,” she says. _Make me feel alive._

It’s selfish, she thinks. Selfish and a bad idea. But she is so tired and so cold and if it’s the last night they have—why shouldn’t she? Why shouldn’t they? She can return to guilt tomorrow.

Maria doesn’t bother turning on the lights, the faint moonlight streaming through the window the only thing cutting through the shadows. Her pulse ticks up when the door shuts behind them, a sense of finality in the sound, and her mouth goes dry when she finally releases Asher’s hand in favor of stepping into his space and sliding her palms up his chest. He shudders, his eyes fluttering closed as he reaches for her, his hands stopping just short of settling on her hips.

“Maria,” he rasps. “Can I—what do you—”

“Kiss me,” she breathes, curling her fingers in his shirt. “Kiss me.”

She half-expects him to grip her tight, to claim her, all snapped tension and rough need. But he doesn’t. Asher’s fingers tremble where he touches her, skimming her waist and curving around her hips with a gentleness that speaks of love. And his mouth is much the same when he finally ducks his head and meets her as she lifts onto her toes—feather-light and careful, only turning to something firmer when she presses up harder into it, a sound of pure need escaping her lips.

Time slips away from her as they kiss and kiss and kiss—it could be minutes or it could be years, Maria hardly knows—and they slowly move from the doorway to the bed, Maria kicking off her heels as they go, Asher pulling her into his lap when he sits on the edge of it. She feels him between her thighs when her knees settle on either side of his hips, and both of them gasp when she unconsciously rocks against him, seeking out friction. 

Asher wrenches his mouth away from hers, pulling back to look in her eyes as he steadies her hips and breathes her name again, another question in the word. 

Maria holds his gaze for a long moment in the silence, her heart skipping a beat, and then leans in slowly to kiss him again, one of her hands making short work of the buttons of his shirt as she reaches down with the other to guide one of his to the zipper at the back of her skirt. 

She’s always been a good Catholic girl, made herself a wife before she allowed herself to truly give into the desires of being a woman, and in widowhood has never before felt the urge to seek out this type of connection for the sake of it. But if this is a sin, let her be Eve. She has already been shut out of one type of paradise—if she can fall into another of a different kind, she may as well. 

Asher turn them so she’s on her back and slides her skirt off, then her blouse, his mouth pressing kisses along her jaw, down her neck, over the tops of her breasts, as his fingers skim over her waist, hips, inner thighs. The more skin he reveals, the less he seems to know where to touch, hands everywhere and nowhere at once as she burns with each stroke of skin against skin.

He whispers her name against her neck and it sounds like a prayer. When he touches her, it’s like she’s a sacred thing, consecrated and awe-inspiring, and he the unworthy sinner. She doesn’t understand what she’s done to deserve such reverence, and her eyes blur and close as he kisses down her body, dragging her underwear down as he settles between her thighs. 

The first touch of his tongue makes her jerk, then bite her lip against a moan. It’s been so long, so long, so long, and she shakes and shivers and leans into his touch, cobwebs clearing away as she remembers how to feel like this. When his fingers dip down between her legs, she nearly laughs amid the frisson of nerves that crashes into her—she is a small woman and Asher is very tall and broad and his hands are large and she wonders if this wasn’t a very foolish idea indeed.

He pauses and looks up at her.

“I’ve got you,” he says quietly. “Trust me?”

Maria swallows and arches her hips up. 

“Of course I do,” she replies, and the smile he flashes her is brilliant even in the dark. 

His fingers move away as his head dips lower and he licks into her with a confidence that makes her swear and twist her fingers into his hair and the sheets beside her because she isn’t convinced she won’t float away without an anchor. And he doesn’t stop again until the tension in her snaps, her vision going white as heat floods through her entire body and leaves her boneless. Only then do his fingers find her again, and she’s shivery and sensitive, but the stretch burns in a good way, muscles she hasn’t used like this in too long shifting for him as he works her open. 

Maria pushes his open shirt off his shoulders as she rocks into the touch, then reaches for his belt. Asher stills and shifts up to kiss her, slowly and thoroughly.

“We don’t have to—”

“I want to,” she assures, kissing him again as the belt gives way. “I want you.”

He draws away from her entirely to kick his pants off, then pulls her up again to resettle her in his lap. His hand comes up to tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear, and Maria almost cries from the aching tenderness of it. This was a mistake, she thinks, but not for the reasons she originally thought. But because she doesn’t know how she can possibly leave after this. 

She surges forward at the thought, kissing him hard, and reaches down to take him inside her. She loses her breath when she sinks down, presses her forehead against his to steady herself, and Asher kisses the side of her mouth, stroking his fingers down her spine.

“I love you,” Maria whispers when she can, and Asher wipes away the tears that slip down her cheek with his thumb. 

“I know,” he replies. “I love you.”

She moves then, and it’s entirely different from his mouth or his fingers, his arms encircling her, surrounding her as he rocks inside her. Her nails bite into his shoulders, rake down his back, and it’s a sacrament unto itself, it’s own kind of baptism, and Maria feels like he’s reached inside her and unlocked something that was dead, cleansed her from the inside out. And she loves, she loves, she loves. 

He doesn’t spill inside her, and Maria almost regrets it, her mind flickering back to her vision from that first night of children’s laughter and dark hair. But then, his fingers are dipping between her thighs again to bring her off one last time, and her mind blanks out as she falls apart in his arms. 

They don’t sleep. Asher wraps his arms around her and Maria pillows her head on his chest, listening to his heart thrumming steadily under her ear. And the clock ticks forward, the light through the window turning from pale moonlight to the pinks and oranges of a rising sun.

“What time is your flight?” Asher asks quietly, the first question to break the contented silence. 

“Eleven,” Maria replies, and her heart cracks. 

A beat passes, and then—

“Maria, don’t—”

“I don’t want to go.”

They look at each other, his hand coming up to cup her cheek, and Maria turns her head to kiss his palm before she repeats herself.

“I don’t want to go.” 

What is there for her to return to, really? A cold apartment full of ghosts? A job? A good job, yes, but one where half her colleagues still don’t respect her, where she’s been working more to numb herself rather than for the love of it. 

No. Everything she has to go back to is just a reminder of everything she’s lost. And maybe it’s true that she will never be free of those losses, maybe she will always feel that grief. But doesn’t she owe it to herself to at least try for something else?

“Marry me,” Asher says, his arm tightening around her waist. “Come home with me. And marry me.”

For once, Maria doesn’t think, doesn’t over-analyze, doesn’t try to talk herself out of a good thing. 

“Yes.”

(And within a handful of years, there is a child, a son, with his hair and her eyes, and her ghosts remain, but she _lives_.)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Filled for a prompt on tumblr: "I would know him in death, at the end of the world."

Maria learns Asher’s hands in a hotel room in Vienna—his, after she checks out of hers and doesn’t go to the airport—not by having them on her like the night before but by turning them over in hers, tracing the lines on his palms, the calluses on his fingers, slotting her fingers between his until she thinks she could trace them with the precision of any of her schematics. It strikes her how little he touched her before and also how little that mattered—she knows his presence nonetheless, his energy, the way he can steal the air from a room or slip through it unnoticed depending on his intention. Not that the distinction applies to her. He steals the air from her regardless, sets her skin buzzing from proximity like a high static charge.

“Are you sure?” Asher asks for the third time as time slips from morning to afternoon in his bed. Maria has already missed her scheduled flight, but they haven’t quite passed a point of no return. She could still go to the airport, could still make up some excuse about oversleeping or getting lost, could still go back to her normal life. Alone.

In the corner of the room sits her suitcase, a silent reminder that if she leaves, that’s it. That is all she’ll have, several days of clothes, a hairbrush, a locket with a picture of Gabriel—she’ll never be allowed to go back, to pack up her life and take it somewhere new. That’s it.

There’s a scar on the side of Asher’s wrist that could be from a knife and her thumb worries over it as she stretches out over him. He has others too, hidden beneath his clothes—she wants to map them with her mouth until she can find them with her eyes closed.

“Are you?” Maria replies, tracing the fork in the third line down on his palm. His eyes flutter closed briefly and he curls his hand to catch her fingers and bring them to his lips.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

“Well then—“ She draws her hand away and kisses him. “—there’s your answer.”

Maria learns his mouth next, in that same room, as he rolls them over and kisses her for hours. She is wide awake and fully clothed and the afternoon daylight is bright where it spills through the curtains and onto the bed, so different from the sunsets and shadows she’s accustomed to seeing him in. And they have time.

The rest of his body she learns later, after the frustrating two weeks spent living with his mother while Asher applied for licenses and visas and whatever else, generally filling out a lot of paperwork on her behalf. She learns it in the week they spend in bed and the week after that when Asher takes her around to all the places he used to go as a child, old churches and medieval fortresses and pebbled beaches. The feeling of his arms around her waist, his chest pressed to her back, his body curving around her whenever he bends to put his mouth at her ear level and point out something new—it all sinks into her sense memory. She never wants to be without it.

But of course, it is rare that anyone gets everything they want.

* * *

Garcia has always had plenty of his father in him, but Maria sees more and more after Asher dies, when she’s left with nothing to hold and nothing to bury even as she swears she still feels him at night, a parenthesis at her back.

Asher lives in Garcia’s height, in his jaw, his hair, his spirit. In split lips and bloodied knuckles because some bully in the schoolyard wouldn’t stop picking on someone smaller. In the way he talks nonsense to kittens on the street, leaving out food and crouching to their level, a gentle giant in comparison.

But Maria forgets other things. She forgets about nationalism, about the pride Asher instilled in their son for his identity in Maria’s adopted country. When she hears about unrest, whispers of a war, she makes plans to try and leave, to keep her son safe.

She doesn’t realize she should have prepared to protect him from himself.

“I joined the army.”

Maria’s fork slips from her fingers, the way it clatters against her plate loud and ugly in the otherwise deafening silence. She stares at her son, a ringing in her ears, her entire world falling out from under her.

“What did you say?” She is cold, so cold, and she has to force herself to swallow the food that’s turned to ash on her tongue.

Garcia wets his lips—a nervous tic, another thing he shared with his father—but sticks out his chin as he meets her gaze steadily.

“I joined the army,” he repeats. “I’m reporting at the end of the week.”

“Like hell you are.” Maria shoves back her chair, unable to sit still. “You are fifteen years old, Garcia! How did they even let you?”

“I lied,” he admits, bold as brass.

“You are a boy, you are my son, you are _still in school_ for the love of all that’s holy—“ She turns on her heel and paces the length of the room. “—no. No, I won’t allow this. You’re not going, end of discussion.”

“I’m not a child!” Garcia shouts. When Maria halts in shock, penitence flashes across his face for a moment before it vanishes into stubbornness. “This is important, mama. I can’t just sit here or run away with you to France or wherever you were thinking while good people are fighting for our country, for something I believe in. I’m doing this whether you like it or not.”

He has never looked more like his father. And she has never hated their similarities more.

Garcia glances away for a moment, swallows, and then more quietly adds, “Papa would have wanted this.”

Maria recoils.

“Don’t you dare,” she hisses. She has never raised a hand to her son, but she’s struck with the half-hysterical urge to slap him for speaking such blasphemy. She’s well aware that she’s crying, although whether it’s rage or grief or fear or something else entirely, she can’t say. She just knows she wants out, needs out of this conversation, of this waking nightmare, as soon as possible.

“Don’t you _dare_ use his memory to justify yourself to me,” she repeats. “He would have _wanted_ this? He would have wanted his teenage son to go to war? To risk his life before he’s even old enough to go to college? I was his wife, Garcia. We shared everything. Do not presume to lecture me about what your father would have wanted.”

Maria sweeps out of the room before either of them can say anything else, needing to pull herself together before she can even begin to approach the idea in any sort of rational fashion. Slamming her bedroom door is perhaps somewhat childish, but there’s a certain amount of catharsis in the rattle of the door frame.

She lies down on the mattress, uneven from half of its unuse since Asher’s death, and stares at the picture of him on her nightstand.

“Damn you,” she whispers to the picture. “Damn you, damn you, damn you.”

_Damn you for putting these ideas in his head. Damn you for dying. Damn you for leaving me._

There’s a scream trapped behind her teeth and she wants to do more than just cry, wants to break things, wants to tear down the walls with her own two hands.

She wants to grab Garcia by the collar and shake sense back into him.

“You will keep him safe,” Maria orders—not a prayer, not a plea to god, but a wife’s demand of her husband. “You will keep him alive. You will bring him back to me.”

The breeze picks up outside and flows through the open window, a gentle caress on the back of her neck. She slides down under the covers fully clothed and pulls them tight around her, allows herself to pretend they’re the arms she needs as she cracks and her pillow grows damp under her cheek.

She and Garcia never do reach a resolution. But she doesn’t stop him when he leaves. And when he comes home years later, she cries again because he’s more like Asher than ever, scars littering his body and shadows behind his eyes, a soldier and a man and everything she didn’t want for him.

* * *

Maria starts losing herself sooner than she expects. She forgets things—little things at first, like where she left her keys or where she set her reading glasses, even when they’re right in front of her. She gets headaches, has dizzy spells. She has waking dreams that are realer than ever, where she could swear she can see Asher, touch him, feel him.

And then, she faints in the kitchen one day while her daughter-in-law and infant granddaughter are in the next room. She wakes up in a hospital bed, Garcia’s hands so tight around hers that they’re crushing her fingers, and when he lifts his head his eyes are red-rimmed.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were sick?” He whispers. “They said you must have been feeling symptoms—why didn’t you—Majka—“

Maria strokes Garcia’s hair as he cries in her lap, looks at Asher over the top of his head, and she realizes.

They give her six months—optimistic, with a tumor like hers, she overhears one of the doctors say before she’s released from the hospital. She wonders if she should be afraid.

She’s not. She has lived her life, has lost two husbands and a child, has seen her other son grow up and get married and have a child of his own.

She has lived her life. She’s not afraid of what comes after.

“I can stay the night, I don’t mind,” Garcia insists—a habit of his from the day Maria returns home on.

“You’re right next door, darling,” she replies. “Go home and give your wife a break from that girl of yours. Babies aren’t easy work, you know.”

“If you need anything—“

“I’ll call.” Maria kisses his cheek and pushes him towards the door. “I love you.”

“Love you, too. I’ll be back in the morning.”

She smiles as she shuts and locks the door behind him, turning off the light in the entryway before going into her bedroom. She changes into a nightgown, slips under the covers onto her uneven mattress, and looks at the picture on the nightstand. She’s still watching it when the mattress dips behind her and an arm curves around her waist, and then Maria sighs and leans back into the comforting warmth of familiarity.

“Are you ready to go, my love?” Asher murmurs in her ear.

She turns away from the picture, turns in his embrace, and kisses him once, twice, before resting her head on his chest.

“Yes. Yes, I’m ready.”

Maria closes her eyes, feels a kiss feathered across her forehead, and slips under.

* * *

It’s bright when she opens her eyes again. Brighter than any day she’s ever seen. Maria doesn’t know where she is, doesn’t know what’s supposed to happen next.

But then, arms wrap around her waist from behind, a chest presses against her back, fingers find hers and lace into the spaces that were meant for them. And she knows exactly where she is.

“I waited so long for you,” Maria whispers, knowing as she closes her eyes again that she’s not going anywhere else.

“I would have waited even longer,” Asher replies, his lips finding her temple. “I didn’t want to take you away from him.”

“No.” She shakes her head. “No, it was long enough. He’ll be okay, and I wanted—I missed you so much. So much.”

“I know.” He pulls away and readjusts his grip on her hand so they can walk, nodding to something she can’t quite see off in the distance. “Shall we?”

“Lead the way.”

**Author's Note:**

> A prompt by the lovely madsthenerdygirl that also turned into a birthday gift for qqueenofhades because my newfound obsession and ocean of emotions for Asher/Maria is entirely her fault. 
> 
> Title from "Talk" by Hozier.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [seen and unseen](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22008055) by [extasiswings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/extasiswings/pseuds/extasiswings)


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